1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention described herein pertain to the field of computer systems. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, one or more embodiments of the invention enable a system and method for creating and providing media objects in a navigable environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Advancements in networking technologies have facilitated the self-publication of user-created content. Average computer users are able to publish digital media over a network, such as the Internet. Available systems, such as the system accessible at youtube.com, provide a platform for users to self-publish media. Such media includes audio recordings, video recordings, audio-video recordings, and other digital media recordings or recordings convertible to a digital format.
In addition, advancements in digital recording technologies have brought about the ability for the average consumer to produce publishable materials. These digital recording technologies include photo cameras, video recorders, audio recorders, audio-video recording devices, and other device capable of recording live media. These recording devices are easy to use, portable, and offer network connectivity which in turn facilitates the creation of media and the publication of user-created media over a network, such as the Internet.
Currently, published media is created, stored and provided with limited context. Published media is typically created, stored and presented as a continuous stream. Authors are not given an incentive to portray a small set of events, entities, thoughts, ideas or concepts in each piece of published media. Because authors are not given incentive to portray such concepts in their recorded media, the recorded media resembles streams of media content rather than media objects.
Furthermore, authors using text to provide context about the stream of media content are limited only to words describing the content. Additional information such as viewership statistics and/or feedback information is sometimes used to provide more information about the context of the media content. Streams of content are harder to describe using concrete terms, which generally facilitates organizing the media by context and relationship.
Published media is also currently provided to viewers with limited context and is not presented in a flexible, navigable environment which provides context about the published media. Rather, published media is searchable based on the limited context information accompanying the published media.
To overcome the problems and limitations described in conjunction with current systems there is a need for a system and method for creating and providing media objects in a navigable environment.